Abstract
Anticipatory states help prioritise relevant perceptual targets over competing distractor stimuli and amplify early brain responses to these targets. Here we combine electroencephalography recordings in humans with multivariate stimulus decoding to address whether anticipation also increases the amount of target identity information contained in these responses, and to ask how targets are prioritised over distractors when these compete in time. We show that anticipatory cues not only boost visual target representations, but also delay the interference on these target representations caused by temporally adjacent distractor stimuli - possibly marking a protective window reserved for high-fidelity target processing. Enhanced target decoding and distractor resistance are further predicted by the attenuation of posterior 8-14 Hz alpha oscillations. These findings thus reveal multiple mechanisms by which anticipatory states help prioritise targets from temporally competing distractors, and they highlight the potential of non-invasive multivariate electrophysiology to track cognitive influences on perception in temporally crowded contexts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1449 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This research was funded by a Newton International Fellowship from The Royal Society and The British Academy (NF140330), as well as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Comission (ACCESS2WM) to F.v.E., and was supported by the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (104571/Z/14/Z) and a James S. McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Collaborative Award (220020448) to A.C.N., and a Medical Research Council Career Development Award (MR/J009024/1) to M.G.S. The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust (203139/Z/ 16/Z). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, the National Institute for Health Research or the Department of Health. We also wish to thank Marcel Niklaus and Nick Myers for their input on the experimental design and their assistance during data collection and analysis, and Alex Board for his help with the bibliography.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| European Comission | ACCESS2WM |
| James S. McDonnell Foundation | 220020448 |
| Wellcome Trust | 104571/Z/14/Z |
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 655374 |
| Medical Research Council | MR/J009024/1, 203139/Z/ 16/Z |
| British Academy | NF140330 |
| Royal Society | |
| NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre |